Alcohol until 4 a.m. recognizes modern life

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California has so many laws – more than 800 new ones passed last year alone – it's worth looking at any opportunity to relax the controls. State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, has sponsored Senate Bill 635, which would extend from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. the mandatory time bars and restaurants must stop serving alcohol. A city or county would have to approve an establishment's keeping the later hours. And, to gives its OK, the municipality would have to gain the permission of the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

“Many cities in California have dynamic social activities that are vital to their economies, but they lack the flexibility to expand their businesses,” Sen. Leno said in a statement. “This legislation would allow destination cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego to start local conversations about the possibility of expanding night life and the benefits it could provide the community by boosting jobs, tourism and local tax revenue.”

New York City's bars, clubs and restaurants can serve booze until 4 a.m. So it might be a selling point if night spots in California's popular tourist and convention locales could do the same, although we wonder how much of a bump local economies and tax revenue would result. People might spend about the same amount of money during a night out, but just spend more of it later.

Another factor to consider is that America's work habits have changed greatly in recent decades. Most people used to work at 9-5 jobs in factories or offices. Afterward, they might go out for entertainment. The interconnected work world now is 24/7. For someone in Orange County doing business with counterparts in China, for example, 3 a.m. might amount to a normal end of the workday.

The Los Angeles Times reported, “Senate Republican leader Robert Huff of Diamond Bar said Leno's proposal raises a lot of questions, including its effect on drunken driving rates, and needs more study.” However, according to Sen. Leno, drunken driving rates are not higher in cities with later drinking hours, including New York, Miami and Las Vegas.

We also talked to Mothers Against Drunk Driving California. “Our position on the actual bill is neutral,” Program Manager Silas Miers told us. He added that the California chapter also supports the national organization's position on uniform closing times for states. MADD's national office in Washington, D.C., sent us its position, “MADD advocates setting uniform statewide cut-off limits on the sale of alcoholic beverages in order to end the practice of ‘barhopping' to find establishments with later closing hours for ‘one last drink' with the likelihood of impaired driving as a result.”

So, if SB635 is passed, it should not be implemented only for a few bars and restaurants, but for many or all of those in a particular area. We encourage the Legislature to pass SB635, then look for other restrictions it could ease on our lives.

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